Positive Liberty

Disagreements over how to respond to terrorism have become pretty much the norm at Positive Liberty of late, although I do hope that in this last round we have not made ourselves too tiresome to the readership.

Matt Welch gave us a link today, in a post where he reviews some responses to his now-infamous ten questions. Although his stated wish was to avoid any contest among those who pride themselves on being the “most” libertarian, I have to say that, at a day’s remove, it’s hard to see his questions serving any other purpose.

The real question, though, should not be “Who is the most libertarian?” but “Which policy choices are the wisest?” It is after all possible that the most perfect libertarianism is not the best policy choice.

Unfortunately, I do not think that the design of Welch’s quiz helps answer this, the more important question. But it does much to stir up divisions where perhaps they need never have existed (for example, I consider this post by Sandefur to be pretty much accurate. It just got buried in the kerfluffle).

I’d also add that I don’t think very much of the recent discussion here has furthered the real debate that we should be having.

First there were Sandefur’s manifestly fire-eating answers — among others that yes, he could imagine situations where the government could justifiably waterboard American citizens, and yes, he does think that some journalists should be investegated for treason, neither with more than a perfunctory explanation.

Then there were my replies. While I do think they were justified, they were also somewhat like shooting a fish in a barrel. With a howitzer.

I remain entirely at a loss as to what Sandefur was getting at when he said that some journalists should probably be investegated for treason. I can’t explain his position, unless of course he means that some ideas should be criminal to express during wartime. If this is what he means, then I disagree, and I cannot accept the proposition as even remotely libertarian.

To be fair, it is possible that he means something else entirely — the trouble is, his post just doesn’t give enough to work with. Blarblog provides a suggestion:

If J is the set of all Americans who are journalists, and T is the set of all Americans who have done something suspicious enough to warrant an investigation for treason, then do you think that it is likely that the intersection of J and T is non-empty? This appears to be Sandefur’s interpretation, and he says “Yes.” Even under that interpretation I say “probably not” (since the set T is so tiny). Under the alternative interpretation, which asks whether any American journalists have done anything as journalists to warrant such an investigation, I say no. I agree with Sandefur that the answer to the second question, on Sedition laws, is “No.”

Agreed, sort of. But it seems ill-considered, given the fragile history of freedom of the press, simply to answer “Yes… probably,” some journalists should be investigated — and then to admit no specific examples, and then to further remain silent on the question of just what treasonous activities are in question. This is pouring fuel on the fire, and I can’t see a good reason to do it.

(I might suggest that one other factor aggravates the situation: Sandefur never allows comments to his posts. These sorts of issues — where a blogger says something clearly off the cuff, and where a reasonable reader might challenge him to elaborate — are exactly what comments are for. By contrast, not opening the comments seems only to stoke the fires of resentment even further, as witnessed by this intemperate reply. Opening the comments, though, remains at the discretion of each individual poster here.)

In any event, I hope to put the whole thing behind us as soon as possible, and I hope that this post will be taken in just such a spirit.

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